Fast food restaurants have become quite common. These restaurants, as well as others, typically use large quantities of grease and/or cooking oil in fryers during the preparation of food. Given the large number of fast food restaurants and the quantity of cooking oil they require, supplying and removing cooking oil to and from these facilities has become a focus of many businesses. The cooking oil is typically shipped in containers, which are stored in a store room within the restaurant. The cooking oil containers occupy significant amounts of valuable space within the store room. The containers are manually carried to a fryer vat, lifted, and poured into the vat. Afterwards, the containers are disposed in the garbage.
Full containers of cooking oil can weigh as much as 35 to 50 pounds and therefore can be difficult to handle, particularly when the container must be carried from a storage area to a fryer. It is also difficult to lift the container and pour the contents into a fryer vat. Once the cooking oil has been poured in the fryer, the oil is often recycled a number of times through a filter before it is disposed. To dispose of the oil, the oil is drained from the fryer into a container carried manually to a disposal tank.
The disposal tank is located outside of the facility, for ease of access by a waste oil dealer, who picks up the waste oil from the disposal tank. The waste oil can then be recycled into other useful products. However, the location of the disposal tank provides a number of problems. The cooking oil, which is often at elevated temperatures, must be carried to the disposal tank. This exposes the worker who carries the cooking oil to the disposal tank to possible burns. In addition, rodents or other animals have access to the waste oil.
One solution to some of the above problems is addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,511 issued to Shumate et al. on Oct. 5, 1993. Shumate describes a bulk cooking oil distribution and waste removal system wherein a filter station, a waste station, a supply station and a flyer station are all connected by piping for movement of oil along preselected pipe paths. However, Shumate addresses the oil distribution within a restaurant, and does not address the oil delivery and removal to and from the facility using the bulk cooking oil.
Bulk delivery of oil can provide a cost effective way to furnish oil for a facility, such as a fast food restaurant. However, there are problems associated with providing bulk oil. For instance, it is difficult to accurately determine the amount of oil delivered or retrieved from a site, particularly if oil is deposited and removed during the same visit of the vehicle. The difficulties in accurately determining the amount of oil delivered or removed allows for theft of oil from the vehicle. Inaccuracies in delivery and/or retrieval amounts can lead to customer dissatisfaction as well, since a restaurant can be charged for more oil than what is actually delivered. Another problem associated with bulk delivery and retrieval is overfilling tanks. Filling tanks beyond their limit raises safety issues, such as cracked or exploding tanks, or unnecessarily creating slippery floor surfaces in the delivery vehicle or the restaurant.
Accordingly, what is needed is a way to cost effectively supply bulk cooking oil. What is further needed is a way to provide and remove cooking oil for cooking oil distribution and waste removal systems.